Japan Diary Fit The Second Cathy and David Notkin 17 October 1990 -- Naomi Gets Married It all started with a fish. A wedding fish. We had been invited to the wedding of Naomi Ishizeki, a Japanese friend, and Glenn Dale (that's really his name), a Swiss-Canadian. They got married in Switzerland and are now living in Basel, but came back for a Japanese ceremony. We went to a party at Naomi's folks the Saturday before the wedding. Another mutual friend, Mayumi, arranged to meet us at the ladies cosmetics counter of a nearby department store (guess who picked the rendezvous spot). We went to the store a little early to look for a white tie for David, since the standard men's dress at Japanese weddings is a black suit and white tie. Funerals are a black suit and black tie. A reversable tie would make formal wear even easier. There was a special counter for white ties, with about forty different styles. We picked up the first and saw it was 5000 yen (about $40), so we looked for the cheaper ones. Hah! That was the cheapest one. They ranged up to at least $100. We then met Mayumi and took a taxi to Naomi's, along with Mayumi's sidekick. (We now have spent the better part of two whole days with the sidekick, but we have never heard her speak a word and still don't know her name.) Even though Mayumi had a detailed map, it took her and the taxi driver ages to actually find Naomi's house. This was great for us to see, since we've had similar troubles that we chalked up almost entirely to language. We arrived at noon. Glenn's parents, in from Vancouver, BC, were there: they looked a bit stunned. But Naomi's mother handled everything smoothly, despite the facts that she speaks little English and that the big foreigners outnumbered the Japanese. She did what all mothers do: she fed us. And fed us. And fed us. We started with custard that someone had brought as an omiyage (one of the many kinds of Japanese presents that are obligatory and that we don't understand -- we brought a $40 box of tangerines, along with smoked salmon from Seattle, just to be safe). Along with custard came the first round of tea, in elegant china cups. Soon, the sushi deliveryman came by with two large lacquered platters of sushi. After the sushi, we had another round of tea (in another set of matched, beautiful china cups). Naomi's Mom also put out some huge peeled and quartered pears. While we were nibbling on the pears using special silver forks, the wedding fish arrived at the door. The fish, a whole red snapper, was sent by a friend of the family. It was in a styrofoam box lined with pine branches. The head and tail were drawn taut with a special red-and-white wedding string that was wrapped around the rest of the fish in a ceremonial way. We think. Given the cost of a box of tangerines, we can't even guess what this wedding fish cost. Rod, Glenn's stepfather, said he was getting tired and would like a cup of coffee. They asked who wanted coffee and who wanted tea (and whether we wanted Japanese green tea or black tea). After getting a variety of answers, we were all served coffee in yet another set of elegant, English porcelain, complete with saucers and matching tiny spoons. Naomi returned from her errands in late afternoon, and we all had ice cream puffs. (The sushi was still out for anybody who was hungry. We weren't.) Dinner was delayed (thank goodness!) because Glenn's flight from Europe was about three hours late. However, we didn't go thirsty, since her mother served us all a wonderful homemade plum juice (in matching glasses, of course). Naomi brought Glenn back from the airport around 7:30PM. Of course, now it was time for dinner, which consisted of two courses: fish and fish. The first fish, served with a green salad (which is unusual in Japan), was a salmon that Glenn's parents brought from Canada. Rod cooked the fish; Mayumi had never seen a man cook before, except in a restaurant, so she was convinced that he was a professional chef. (In reality, he's a CPA, so the fish was sort of oily.) We also had wine, starting with some Japanese whites (bleah!) followed by some French Reds that Glenn had brought from Europe. (When Glenn came through customs, he had just a small carry-on bag with a few clothes and lots of wine. The customs men worked him over, telling him he had to be a drug trafficker since he wasn't bringing anything to wear.) Not so long after the first course, the wedding fish (now cooked) appeared at the table. It was delicious, served with fresh lime juice. Naomi's brother came home from his part-time job after we had eaten. His younger sister, who had arrived from her part-time job about an hour earlier, jumped to attention and made sure he had everything he wanted. Naomi then asked (well, told) him to take us home. After saying goodbyes to everyone (this takes a _long_ time in Japan), we hopped in his Chevrolet Camaro (What trade imbalance?), complete with the high-status left-side steering wheel. Cathy's Japanese was sufficient to direct us home. After he let us out of the car, we got a nearly 90-degree bow because Cathy had told him David was a professor at Osaka University. (It's nice that it impresses some people.) We skipped the family outing to Nara Prefecture the next day because we were a little burned out. We were sorry, however, to miss a special ceremony where a giant Buddha is served tea in a giant cup. (If Naomi's mother brought the cup, we're sure it was one of a matching set.) The wedding itself was on Tuesday, at the very famous Yasaka (Shinto) Shrine in the center of Kyoto. Along with most of the family (mother, sister, grandmother, Naomi and Glenn, and Glenn's folks), we took the bus, monorail, and train, arriving at the Shrine around 10:30AM. We walked through the grounds; we were much more of a draw for the school groups than was the temple architecture. The special wedding building is a Meiji-era house. Apparently it was once owned by the Mitsui Group (a huge Japanese conglomerate), and the Emperor slept there. We think. David heard this in a mixture of Japanese and English, while Cathy was off getting fitted. Fitted into what, you ask? Well, actually nothing fit. Cathy, along with Naomi, her sister, her mother, her grandmother, and Glenn's mother, were all being dressed in kimono, the women's formal wear for a wedding. Of course, Cathy's not quite the same size as the average Japanese woman. So, finding underslips and kimono and tabi (a kind of ankle-length sock split at the big toe) and shoes at the shrine's formal-wear rental shop was a source of difficulty and amusement for everyone. But finally, the women appeared, all of them absolutely stunning. And unable to walk or breathe. Most of the kimonos were black with beautiful obi sashes. The obi of recently married women, like Cathy, is tied into a flower at the back of the kimono. Unmarried women, like Naomi's sister, were in a much more colorful kimono, with long sleeves (which must be cut after marriage), and an even bigger flower tied in back. The older women have no flower, but have the obi folded sort of in a fanny-pack in back. Cathy says there was a lot going on under the kimono. There were layers of underwear, padded cushions, and many (maybe eight or ten) tightly drawn strings holding it all together. There was no velcro in sight. Cathy quickly learned to stick her belly out while the dressers were trying to draw the strings; this was especially hard when one of the ladies kneed Cathy in the stomach to try to tie the strings even tighter. The women all had their hair and makeup professionally done after they were dressed. The dressers followed the women all day to make sure that they stayed beautiful at all times. Since Cathy's top half is especially not kimono-sized, they spent much of their time adjusting the top half of her kimono. No doubt, this is a full service shrine. While the women were getting dressed, Glenn, Rod, and David were upstairs chatting. Naomi's father, who only Rod had met before, came in. Of course, her father spoke no English so David's Japanese, which is pitiful, was the only way to communicate. Now, this isn't usually so bad, but Glenn felt awful since it was the first time he was meeting his father-in-law. (He couldn't even introduce himself with the Japanese version of ``How do you do?'') The good news was that Glenn had no idea if her father was saying ``Pleased to meet you'' or ``Stay away from my daughter!'' There was one sort of incomprehensible ``conversation'' about watches and how big Glenn's wrist was. Later on, when he and Naomi received Seiko watches (not, we promise, the K-Mart blue-light variety) from her father, the conversation became clearer. (Glenn's Swiss Mom wanted to know why the watches weren't Swiss; she was appeased a bit when Naomi's mother showed off her Swiss watch.) Other presents had been arriving during the day. The traditional present is money -- good in any culture. Of course there is a Japanese way to give it: wrap it in a set of beautiful, intricately folded envelopes, and give lots of it. We gave the minimum (or maybe below the minimum, but we're foreigners) of 10,000 yen (about $70). On the previous day, one of her father's business associates had delivered a envelope about 100 times as thick. Glenn was upset both by the amount and because Naomi's mother did a super bow, prostrated on the floor, when it arrived. Geez, we don't think it was out of line at all. Now, you might think that David's white tie was enough. But no. Naomi wanted Glenn, Rod, and David dressed in traditional Japanese wedding clothes. So all of us trooped downstairs to get dressed in identical outfits. The bottom layer consisted of a white t-shirt and tabi. Next came several underlayers, including a kind of cumberbund, and a gray overshirt. The top was a black jacket with a simple design. The bottom was a grey and white striped hakama (split skirt). Across the top was a string holding a white pom-pom of some sort. Of course, finding shoes that fit was as difficult for the men as for the Western women. The dress itself was pretty unusual for us. But what was even more unusual was that Naomi's father and brother were in -- you guessed it -- suits and ties. Figure that out, will ya. We've saved the best for last: Naomi's clothes. She started off in traditional white Shinto wedding kimono. It was very heavy, consisting of many layers. Her face was completely whitened with traditional Japanese makeup. She had silver platform sandals that were four or five inches high. She wore a heavy lacquered wig and a white headdress that weighed about five kilograms. Really. We were led into the room for the ceremony by two women, apparently priestesses, dressed in white robes, black hakama, and unusual red and green feathered crowns. The Japanese family sat on one side, the rest of us on the other. Naomi and Glenn sat on stools in the middle. There were two Shinto priests already there, a young one who did most of the work and an older one who supervised. They both wore floor-length white robes, with huge lacquered black clogs sticking out at the bottom. Their hats looked like shiny black boxes. They brought out five platters, containing sake, apples, big cakes of mochi (rice gluten), and two other weird foods. The younger priest then did some chanting and waved a long wand, maybe made of rice stalks, over everybody in the room, especially Naomi and the two priestesses. At some point in the middle of the ceremony, everyone was permitted to take pictures. And out came 10 cameras and a video camera. During all this two musicians played haunting, Japanese music from behind a screen. Then Glenn had to read some vows in Japanese that Naomi had transliterated into Roman characters. The priestesses then served Naomi and Glenn sake, moving back and forth between them, pouring and re-pouring many times in some complex pattern. We then went into another room and stood at some high tables. Each place was set with a small plate, a cup, and a condom-sized package. The priest stood and said a blessing. The priestesses then came to each of us (again, in some intricate pattern) and poured a little sake in each of our cups. After the conventional toast (no glasses were clinked together -- this was serious business), we each drank the sake. They told us to take the small package, which we later found out contained a piece of dried squid and a kombu, which is a seaweed that has the same pronunciation as the Japanese word for pleasure. It wouldn't be a wedding without professional photographs. So we trooped outside to an incredible garden with an excitable old Japanese man all set up to shoot us. The pictures were pretty much like at a Western wedding, although everybody was seated for most of them and people aren't supposed to smile. The best part was watching the photographer try to get Naomi's head straight; remember, this ain't easy with 11 pounds of headdress and a heavy wig on top. Then Naomi ran off to change into her next costume. (Well, in the first costume she couldn't exactly run.) While she was changing, we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, we were all taken upstairs to yet another room. She and Glenn stood in the hallway against a gilded screen, sort of like a reception line. Naomi had changed into a sumptuous red silk kimono. (We later learned that the rental fee for this was about $3,000.) We went into the room for dinner. (This is the room where the Emperor slept.) Naomi and Glenn sat at the front of the room, at their own raised table. We were all on cushions on the tatami (floor mats) except Glenn's parents, who also got low tables since they were unable to kneel for an extended period. The seating plan had all the Japanese on one side and all us foreigners on the other. After the first course was served, Naomi took off to change clothes yet again. After the ninth or tenth course was served, she returned in her (very own) blue kimono and her (very own) hair. Glenn was happy to have her back, since it's lonely at the front. (Luckily, the attendants were very good at keeping his beer glass full.) Each individual or couple, including the grandmother but not the rest of the Naomi's immediate family, received a present. It turned out to be a set of five simple, but elegant, white tea cups. (We're all ready to start entertaining.) Afterwards, almost everybody went on a walk to Kiyomizu, a wonderful nearby temple in the hills overlooking Kyoto. Naomi and Glenn's mother stayed in their kimono, but everybody else changed back to street clothes. Glenn was not wearing a white tie, and looked pretty much like the average, scruffy Canadian out looking for a good time. Several people stopped Naomi to take her picture, but somehow they didn't want to include Glenn when she asked to have her husband in the picture. Between the kimono, the unusual combination of Japanese and foreigners, and Glenn and Naomi holding hands (holding hands on the street is a weak taboo in Japan), it was nice change for David's beard not to be the center of attention. All in all, it was nice to see two people who had bridged such different cultures and were very much in love. Autumn Excursions (Onsen, Sento, and Wara) Most people land in Japan for the first time and head right for the Ginza. Our friends Hania and Tom -- complete with matching, incredibly automatic Japanese cameras -- went with us to Ryujin Onsen (hot springs) the day after they arrived. Wakayama Prefecture is filled with hot springs. We chose Ryujin because it sounded peaceful and quiet, in contrast to many of the onsen that are huge resorts filled with people who want to go to the famous places where everybody else goes. To get to Ryujin, we took the train south from Osaka along the pretty west coast of Wayakama, which is a large peninsula jutting into the Pacific. We changed to a bus at Kii Tanabe, for a two hour ride up into the mountains in the center of Wakayama. The bus was filled with Japanese senior citizens out looking for a good time. We had hoped that the leaves would be showing their fall colors, but instead we had to settle for gorgeous mountain vistas. The matching, incredibly automatic Japanese cameras recorded every curve of the winding road. Ryujin is small town that relies entirely on its hot springs for survival. We had tried to get reservations in one of the traditional 17th century inns, but they were booked. So instead we stayed in the last room available at the government lodge. The lodge is a bit like traditional inns, except that the meals are served in a large cafeteria instead of in your room. Also, you don't get a special person to look after you and your room. The setting was stunning and the food was good -- rice, pickles, seaweed, clams and fish for dinner, and rice, pickles, seaweed, and fish for breakfast. Of course you could have beer, sake or whiskey for dinner, or breakfast, for that matter, as many guests did. The lodge overlooked a large, swiftly flowing mountain river. Across the footbridge from the lodge was the main part of town, including all the inns and, most important, the public bath. The bath was outdoors, hanging above the river about fifty feet. The men's half of the bath was not nearly as enclosed as the women's, which meant the men had a better view of the scenery and the women had a better view of the men (from the footbridge). The baths themselves were really nice, made from smooth dark river stones, and were about 10 feet by 20 feet. Cathy and Hania stayed in the bath as the sun set and the stars came out. They felt incredibly calm, which is good since the baths are famous for treating hysteria. The only hysterical thing Cathy overheard was two women comparing anatomy. One thing we've really missed since we left Tokyo was our neighborhood public bath (sento). We've taken long walks in our Osaka neighborhood looking for the distinctive black-topped, 20 meter high chimney that marks sento throughout Japan. The walks were great, but we had absolutely no luck in finding a sento. At the end of one of our walks (on a national holiday, Culture Day), we were sitting in an unusual park. It was unusual for several reasons: kids -- including the cutest set of triplets -- were playing freely (instead of studying for their kindergarten entrance examinations); there were some homeless people, complete with bedrolls and a colony of cats; a guy on one of the baseball teams was in his usual suit and tie; and, most exciting, a man walked past carrying his wash bucket, towel, and shampoo. So we followed him, 20 paces behind. He led us right to it. The sento. But, there was no distinctive chimney. This is a modern, four story sento in a commercial building about five minutes from our house. Later that night, we went to check out the inside. It's a wonderful water wonderland! For 250 yen, you get to use any or all of the following: all the hot water you need to clean your grimy body; a standard hot bath or two; a cold bath; a radon bath; a dry sauna and a steam room; an outdoor spot for cooling off; a pool with both a slide and also a strong jet of water coming straight down about 8 feet to the pool below (it's great for loosening shoulder and back muscles); and the heart-stopping electric pool. This pool, which is probably marked in Japanese, caught us both unawares. You move into the corner of an inocuous looking tub. Then, you feel this strange tingling that at first feels like lots of fast little water jets or pinpricks and then like a muscle spasm as you lower your body into it. Then your mind says, ``I'm being electrocuted.'' Then you either jump out immediately like David, or you foolishly say, ``Let's see what this is like,'' like Cathy did. Cathy has decided to do this no more, both because she didn't like the feeling after all, and because she no longer remembers her mother's maiden name. (Which is especially surprising, since it's her own middle name.) On the weekend preceding the Emperor's Enthronement -- he's now officially Emperor, presiding over the Heisei (Lasting Peace) Era -- we were invited to a farm owned by a friend of a friend. Liz, the owner, is a British woman who has lived in Japan for 20 years or so. Her occupation is teaching English, but her avocation is taking care of every mistreated animal she hears about. When we arrived at the train station, about an hour north of our apartment, our friend Diane picked us up in Liz's little truck. The first order of business when we jumped out was to bring in the pony and the goats. The three of us went down to the field, tethered the pony, and chased the goats up to the barn. The goats were good, until we passed the flower garden, which looked to them like an appetizer before dinner. Cathy and I spent the night down the road with the Mukai family, a Japanese family that helps Liz out a lot. Their house too is also a little zoo, with three or four dogs (including a white Pyrenees that stands about six foot tall on its hind legs), a couple of cats, and a tanuki, which is a kind of Japanese raccoon. Inside we were greeted by a mynah bird that says ``konnichi wa'' (which is ``good day'' in Japanese). There are also several turtles, another cat or two, and who knows what else. We were very comfortable, in a big tatami mat room with a heavy futon that kept us plenty warm throughout the night. The house is heated by kotatsu: there is no central heating for this large, uninsulated Japanese house. Kotatsu are small tables that sit in the middle of a room, with a heater underneath and a blanket over the top. People sit at the table and stick their legs (and sometimes arms) under the blanket to keep warm. In winter, the family eats, does homework, writes letters, and everything else around the kotatsu. There were two bathroom stalls side-by-side, one marked for men and one marked for women, which we haven't seen before. It turns out that the ``men's'' room is just a urinal, while the ``women's'' room has a Japanese- style toilet. Neither the urinal nor the toilet flush: both drain directly into an open-air tank under the house. Of course, there's no kotatsu in the stalls, so using the toilets in winter must get mighty cold. Despite the comfort, Cathy had an awful night because she's allergic to dogs (and maybe mynah birds). In morning, I tried to let her sleep late, but finally I had to wake her up because the Japanese family didn't speak any English and I had no idea what was going on. Of course, Cathy was exhausted and wheezy, which made speaking Japanese even harder than usual for her. But we discussed where we were from, what we wanted to eat (we got coffee, French toast, persimmons, and pears), and a few other things. The most remarkable thing about this family was that they seemed much more relaxed and balanced than other families we have met. For instance, they have decided not to send their 8-year-old girl and 6-year-old boy to juku, which are the cram schools that students at every level in Japan seem to attend. The reason is that they don't want their kids getting into the neurotic rat race that virtually all Japanese strive to enter. The kids seemed bright, cheerful, and eager to find Seattle on their map. Of course, the little girl did wear a jacket that said, on the back, in typically inexplicable English, ``Vigorous Throw Up.'' (We think it had something to do with her volleyball team.) Leaving the girl behind to keep warm under the kotatsu, the parents and the boy drove us back to Liz's. That's where we first learned about wara. Acres and acres of wara. Wara is the straw left over from the rice harvest. Liz needs a lot of straw for bedding and feeding her animals. The Mukais' parents and other local farmers have lots of wara in their fields. The deal is simple: if Liz cleans out their fields, she can have the wara. Unfortunately, gathering wara is labor-intensive. Six of us drove the little truck down to some of the Mukais' fields. When we got close to the fields, Paul pointed out several snakes. These were safe snakes, but there is a venomous snake, the mamushi, that also enjoys the muck of the rice fields. (Mexico has tequila with a worm in the bottle; Japan makes a liqueur that features one of these poisonous snakes curled up in the bottle -- mamushi zake. Liz has a bottle, but Diane couldn't find it so we didn't get a chance to taste it. Damn.) The wara was already gathered in bundles throughout the field. But getting to it, and getting it back to the truck, was adventurous. We'd each been assigned a pair of knee high rubber boots and work gloves. We waded through the muck, checked under the wara for snakes, and oozed back through the goop. Frequently, we were sucked into the muck and couldn't move. Paul, who had done this before, taught us the trick for getting out, which was to point your toe straight down and then lift up. This isn't so hard in theory, but it's pretty tough when you're carrying a big load of wet, heavy, smelly wara. We didn't lose our boots too often. Six of us cleared two fields in a couple of hours, filling the truck three or four times. We were happy to get back to the lunch Diane had prepared for everybody: cold cuts, oden (a rich, Japanese vegetable stew), pasta salad, brownies and pumpkin pies. For the afternoon shift, we happily guided some unsuspecting newcomers to the wara fields, while we stayed behind and took the bark off of thin pine poles to be used as fenceposts. The job was not nearly as challenging, and we enjoyed the warm afternoon sun with women from all over the world: Scottish, Canadian-Japanese, Swedish-English, and Japanese. We didn't get entirely away from the wara, though, since we were responsible for unloading and spreading the wara to dry from the trucks when they returned from the fields. Since Cathy and I were now experts at it, we were asked to bring the pony and the goats in once again. Cathy ate the flowers on the way back this time. We went back to de-barking until long after nightfall, in part because Cathy couldn't breathe too well inside. After we finished, we laid on piles of wara and watched the stars come out over the dark country fields. When we finally went in, the house was filled with hungry, filthy people. And dogs. Luckily, the bath was available, and Cathy and I cleaned up and soaked in the hot stone bath for awhile. The bath, clean clothes, and a beer made us feel human once again. We were lucky to get a ride home from a junk man whose favorite movie is ``Repo Man.'' He's an American married to a Japanese woman, and he's lived her for five years. What he does is cruise the streets and back alleys, finding appliances of all kinds, most in excellent condition, repairing and selling them. It was nice getting door-to-door service because we were so tired. We woke up the next day to a cold, crisp day. It seemed that the leaves had changed colors overnight. We also woke up to really sore muscles so we headed off to the sento to warm up and relax -- avoiding the electric pool of course. Fall has arrived. The Kenya Highlands: Home on Derange Pablo Cohn Now, Ridge's job, we were told, was to make sure that the animals around the game reserve were happy and healthy and didn't eat anyone. Of course, we were a bit worried from the time that he suggested we go out to play with the cheetahs, and that he'd be out there to join us in ``just a minute,'' but that's a different story. Ridge's job description included keeping Devon and myself from getting folded, spindled, mutilated or ingested by the local mammals, and by and large, we trusted him to do that job. Rather, we trusted him as much as one would trust anyone whose previous job was to be leapt upon by tigers and make it look as though they were eating him. Yes, life was never dull around Ridge. One morning, after we'd spent the night at Ridge's house at the edge of the reserve, he called Devon and me out to the front perimeter where the electric fence kept wayward oryx and rhinos from visiting us without an invitation. ``Man,'' Ridge exclaimed. ``That's one helluva mean looking cape buffalo.'' Sure, but he's a bit far away for a good photo, I thought. Had I been slightly quicker of mind, I would have known exactly Ridge would say next. ``Let's go out and take a look at him!'' Now, we had been told that of all the dangerous animals in Africa, the Cape Buffalo held a special place. The lion and leopard only kill if they're hungry or if you threaten their young. The elephant and rhinoceros, being vegetarians, will only charge if you threaten their young, and are much more likely just to move away defensively. The cape buffalo, however, isn't so clever. It is a reminder of the saying that ``when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'' The only thing that a cape buffalo knows how to do is eat grass and trample anything that it doesn't recognize or understand. With a running weight eclipsing many American cars, it is admirably suited to both tasks. We had been repeatedly warned that the cape buffalo response to humans on foot was, ``Hmmm, can't tell what it is. Maybe I'd just better go trample it.'' ``C'mon,'' Ridge urged. ``You'll never get a good photo of it if we don't get closer!'' This was true, but might have been secondary to the more important goal of maintaining our own structural integrity. The buff was probably about 75 meters from the fence, and paying us only intermittent attention as Ridge opened the gate and went sauntering out after it. Still weighing the cheetah incident in our minds, Devon and I timidly followed, wondering how we could slow him down. We caught up with Ridge, still advancing empty-handed on the beast. He sensed our apprehension and reassured us that only last week he and the other caretaker been charged by a buffalo from about this range and had _easily_ escaped by splitting up and diving over the electric fence with at least a second or two to spare. That was all we needed to hear. Devon and I reached an immediate consensus: we weren't going a step farther. We were slightly less than halfway out to the buffalo, and that was all the advantage I was willing to concede. Ridge was disappointed, but relented and went no further. I was grateful that our quarry wasn't regarding us with that neck-stiffened, ears-back stance that is offered as the ``prepare to be trampled'' indicator, and raised my camera to fire off a couple of frames. Ridge, I should have realized, would have none of that. ``You can't take a picture like that, he's not even paying attention to us!'' ``That's just fine...'' ``Hang on just a moment.'' With no further warning, Ridge was off like a shot, charging _at_ the cape buffalo with arms waving, making hissing and spitting noises like an enraged leopard. Head up, neck stiffened, ears back and we've got the undivided attention of the most dangerous animal in Africa. Oh, and about 25 meters of grassland and an electric fence to cross if we ever intend to see our pictures developed. Ridge has stopped running _toward_ the buffalo, has turned around, and is sauntering back to us with the advisory ``Okay, now you can take the picture.'' This gets my brain working again, and, in addition to signaling my fingers that they should take the photo, suggests to my lungs that I might want to start breathing again, just in case I have any plans to remain conscious, and perhaps flee back to the safety of the perimeter. I do. Both Devon and I do. The buffalo doesn't charge. Ridge strolls back to the fence and shuts it behind him. ``Man,'' he says in a satisfied voice, ``is that ever a scary looking animal!'' I never got around to asking Ridge just what warped logic was responsible for the charge. Something about the leopard noises? Something about that particular buffalo? This was a man who made his living _not_ getting killed by things that had evolved, it seemed, for the express purpose of killing him. He seemed to do very well at it, and Devon and I learned, as time went by to trust Ridge almost completely. _Almost._ What I Did On My Extended Summer Vacation Neil McKenzie During 1990 and parts of 1991 I worked for LaserAccess Corporation. Laser is a startup company located in the Canyon Park industrial complex in Bothell, northeast of Seattle. From time to time, people have asked me what the company makes and what work I did for them. Here's an overview of the product and some technical details. The product: LaserAccess makes the LA1500, which is an archival storage system for page-oriented text documents (reports). It uses WORM (write-once, read-mostly) optical disk storage. It is a channel-attached peripheral for IBM mainframes. Software at both the application and systems level are provided for online viewing of the stored documents. Design issues: Refer to Figure 1 (see f91scans or printed version) for a block diagram of the LA1500. Generic interface -- The LA1500 looks to the mainframe like a 3211 line printer and a 3803 tape drive. Print jobs are recorded to the optical disks using standard printer facilities. Page retrievals use the tape channel. Custom device drivers in the operating system layer are not necessary. Compatibility -- The LA1500 is designed to ``plug and play'' in every IBM mainframe environment. It runs under three different application environments under the MVS operating system which are called IMS, CICS and TSO. The LA1500 is being ported to the DOS/VSE operating system as well. Fast online report viewing -- The user should be able to browse report pages quickly for both sequential and random access. Optionally, the user can access pages by keyword. User model: Application layer -- Users access the LA1500 by running the application called OVS, an acronym for Online Viewing System. Customer sites can optionally create their own application programs. OVS is written in COBOL. Interface layer -- ODI, which stands for Optical Device Interface, is a high-priority background process that links the application layer with the LA1500. ODI is written in 360 assembler. Hardware: Processor -- The LA1500 uses an IBM PC clone to control the channel interface, the optical disk drives, a local dot-matrix printer and optionally an optical disk jukebox. Both a 386 PC and a faster 486 PC are offered as choices. The PC is bundled with a 300 Mbyte local hard disk. A 600 Mbyte hard disk is also available. Interface -- The LA1500 uses two Auscom channel interface units: a printer interface and a tape interface. These are cabled to a custom printed circuit board in the PC, called the COM-AI (Communication to the Auscom Interface). WORM storage -- The LA1500 uses LMSI 1200 optical drives. Platters store 1 Gbyte per side. A future product will use ATG drives. ATG platters store 3 Gbyte per side. Both technologies use 12 inch diameter platters. Jukebox option -- Jukeboxes house one to five drives and tens of platters. Jukeboxes are a natural extention to the memory hierarchy. Access is slower -- it takes roughly ten seconds for the jukebox to load a platter and spin it up. However, they are convenient and cost-effective for providing 50 to 500 Gbytes of online WORM storage. Implementation: The PC runs MS-DOS with a multitasking environment called DESQview. PC software is organized as a number of independent communicating processes under DESQview. Each process is written either in C or 386 assembler. Keywords are defined at recording-time rather than retrieval-time. This eliminates the possibility of searching an entire report for the keyword during retrieval. Keywords are stored in a B-tree which allows nearly uniformly quick access to any page. Each report has an associated Report Definition Table or RDT. The RDT tells the 1500 where to store the incoming report to be recorded, and defines the keyword file. Keywords are recorded to optical disk along with the report data. The 1500 maintains local databases of keywords, platters known to the system, and a master directory of all known reports and all known RDTs. The magnetic disk is used to stage these databases, each of which can grow quite large. Performance issues: Some of the work I did for Laser was the analysis of performance bottlenecks in the 1500. Optical disk -- Optical disks have higher access times than magnetic; 100 to 300 milliseconds is typical for optical disk (compared to a tenth of this for magnetic disk). Surprisingly, optical disk access time has only minor impact on the performance of the entire system. Microprocessor -- Matching keywords during recording is expensive. Upgrading from a 16-MHz 386 to a 33-MHz 486 has resulted in a better than 2X improvement in recording speed without changing anything else in the system. This demonstrates that even systems with slow I/O may be CPU-bound. Operating system -- The LA1500 suffers from the limitations of MS-DOS such as the 640K limit for application programs. DESQview allows the PC to run many independent applications but each one is bound to the 640K limit. Future directions may involve porting the product to Xenix or to a RISC platform. Channel interface -- The 3211 printer channel interface is notoriously slow. In a future version of the 1500, the 3211 Auscom may be eliminated; all report recording and retrieval would used the tape channel instead. This would require significant change to ODI and to the 1500 code. Magnetic disk -- The magnetic disk interface has been upgraded to a caching SCSI host adapter with 4 Mbytes of on-card disk cache. This has improved system performance and also greatly enhanced system development (improved compiler speed, for instance). Keyword database -- When a report is opened for the first time, the entire keyword database must first be read from the optical disk. Subsequent accesses use a RAM or magnetic disk copy of this database. This database can be on the order of megabytes and take 30 to 60 seconds to inhale. In a future release, this time could be reduced by paging the database off optical disk rather than inhaling it in its entirety. Jukebox platter management -- Systems with jukeboxes require jukebox driver code. When many simultaneous platters are requested, the 1500 must decide when and in what order each platter is loaded. The current implementation is rudimentary. I have researched improving the performance and error recovery of the platter management task. Other work: I created many utilities and test programs. One of the most useful of these was an extended self-test which would exercise the jukebox and the retrieval system by issuing random commands from simulated users. The 1500 poses many classic operating system problems, such as resource management and prevention of deadlock. I improved the data buffer management in such a way that increased the number of simultaneous users from 32 to 256 without requiring additional memory. From the hardware side, I managed the COM-AI printed circuit board project. Prior to this, the COM-AI was shipped as a wire-wrap card. This project was a success; the first version of the layout was correct. Sales: LaserAccess has sold systems nationwide. Local customers include Alaska Airlines, Unigard Insurance and Puget Power. Alaska uses the LA1500 to store frequent-flyer information. Contacts: For further information, contact Tom Boyle, the engineering manager, or Steve Waters, the principal designer of the 1500. The phone number at LaserAccess is 485-1555. Tell them that Neil sent you. Six and a Half Weeks in the USSR Sung-Eun Choi In the summer of 1990, I and seven other students from the U. of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana spent six weeks in what was then the Soviet Union on an exchange program with the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere, and Propagation of Radio Waves (Sibizmir, for short) in Irkutsk. It was a unique experience not only from the standpoint of travel and culture, but as most foreigners experience, even the most simple things become difficult. Aside from the usual follies of foreign travel, we lived a _very_ chaotic system of existence. I call it a system because there were rules for everything (written or unwritten) and back-alleyways to get around the rules. Everything had to be planned, though no one followed the plan. And, no matter how complicated and interminable a process seemed, by some strange coincidence of nature or stroke of luck, things usually fell into place. To give the reader some perspective, while I was there, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of Russia, stopping government subsidies of certain goods was being debated, the Berlin Wall had recently fallen and German currency was being unified, most of the Eastern Block nations were still under communist rule and one dollar was worth six roubles (100 kopecks = 1 rouble.) Our itinerary included Leningrad; Irkutsk, a Siberian academic city; Bratsk, a Siberian industrial city; and Moscow as well as a few side trips. Marxist ideology mixed with internal corruption have put the Soviet Union in a state which cannot be envisioned without an actual visit. That was where I was headed -- by choice. As I was being driven to the airport, I kept wondering if four rolls of toilet paper, thirteen bars of soap, six bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a complete medical kit were enough for six weeks in the USSR. Leningrad is a beautiful city. The Winter Palace, built by Katherine the Great, now the Hermitage Museum, was where Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 actually took place; the room in which the Provisional Government of the time was taken over has been kept intact. The Pavlov Institute, where Pavlov had conducted cruel experiments on dogs to explain human behavior, is now a physiology institute. Leningrad has, as does Moscow, an unbelievable underground metro system. The stations are all adorned with statues, mosaics or other works of art. During the peak hours, the trains run almost one a minute. For a mere five kopecks one can ride, with any number of transfers, anywhere the metro can go. But these magnificent palaces, museums and even the metro of which the city brags tell only half the story; the other half is that of the sad, desperate faces. On the streets, _no one_ is smiling. We would pass buses, filled well beyond the recommended capacities, and every rider was expressionless. The children are so serious at such a young age. They are not constantly amusing themselves; they do not even misbehave in public (well, maybe that's not too bad). We, complete strangers, would offer the children candy and the parents would allow it! It made the children very happy. People respect and trust each other, especially the elderly; they understand the turmoil each person has suffered through. We were told that if we were seated on the metro or on a bus and an older person were to get on, we would be expected to offer them the seat. We flew the Soviet airline Aeroflot, the largest airline in the world, to Irkutsk. With none of the safety features working and a very apathetic flight crew, we felt lucky to have survived. Irkutsk is located in southern Siberia about an hour from Lake Baikal, the deepest fresh water lake in the world, and 150 miles from the Mongolian border. It was definitely a pleasant change from Leningrad. The people seemed happier there and they were excited to have us. At one time two university students who had been to the United States recently waited for us outside our hotel to invite us to their dacha. The city itself feels new. Downtown Irkutsk was lined with shops, more than a handful of which were closed. There are also a few movie theaters which played Soviet as well as foreign movies. In both the theaters and in video salons (where they play video tapes of movies) the dubbing is done by at most two voices: one male and one female. Usually there is only one male who speaks in complete monotone for every character in the movie. My friends and I saw one of the Police Academy movies at a video salon -- both languages were difficult to understand because the original sound and the dubbing are played at approximately the same volume. We had tea and cakes, a common Soviet custom, with various clubs and groups of Soviets. Sibizmir had an ``exchange of music'' party for us. We met with scientists from Sibizmir and the Institute's jazz band played a few numbers for us. We went to a meeting of the ``English Tea Club'' -- a club of foreign language students and other English speaking members of the community where only English was spoken. Most of the younger students would ask us questions about our social lives while the older scientists and workers asked us about wages and our houses. The most difficult part about this was that we weren't sure if telling the whole truth was wise. Tours of the three institutes in Irkutsk showed us a little of the Soviet state of the art. We saw very primitive-looking but highly advanced equipment that was designed and fabricated by the scientists themselves. They were very proud of their work -- and they had a right to be. As ancient as their equipment looked, the tools by which this equipment were fabricated were even more archaic. At the same time we saw twenty-year-old computers still in use at every institute we visited. And despite this lack of technology in certain areas, Sibizmir's solar telescopes had produced results and pictures which were as advanced and, in some cases, more advanced that those produced in Western countries. The Institute's radio telescope was in Badari in the Buryat region of the Russian republic; its location was so close to the Soviet-Mongolian border that travelers to the region needed special papers. Our guide was supposed to meet with a KGB agent to give him our papers. Unfortunately, the agent never showed up. (We were all very excited about meeting a non-undercover KGB agent.) The radio telescope is the largest solar radio telescope in the world. It consists of about 256 dishes which monitor the sun's activity. As before, they were using the same old, slow computers for their number crunching as the other laboratories were. The city of Bratsk is located about 1500 miles northeast of Irkutsk. Its prized possession: the Bratsk hydroelectric dam. The power station servicing the dam is the fifth largest in the world; the reservoir created by the dam is the largest in the world. The dam built the city. In spite of these achievements, Bratsk is a city of horror. We had been disgusted by the enormous amounts of pollution in Irkutsk and Leningrad, yet Bratsk was much worse than this. (A few months before we left the US, National Geographic Magazine had run a two part special on Siberia; Irkutsk was one of the cities they visited, but Bratsk was not. The team of National Geographic researchers and photographers had been denied travel access to Bratsk because the severe pollution was dangerous to their health.) Wages for the average worker in Bratsk are 90% higher than the country's average: 40% for the ``remoteness'' of the city and 50% for its climate; the stores are better stocked than any we had seen so far. Yet the people on the streets in Bratsk seemed even more troubled; as in Leningrad, most of the citizens had blank, frightening stares on their faces as we passed them. Our visit to the Bratsk Polytechnic Institute was a pleasant change from this. The students and scientists were, as always, very curious about what we had to say. We met with an English class and who eagerly asked us questions about our lives in America. The laboratories are better equipped and in much better condition than those we had seen previously. The chemistry department has fairly modern equipment which was imported from Germany and Hungary. Computers are ``widely'' available to the students; even though some of the computers used a cassette tape drive, there were more than a dozen of them in one room. Siberia is quite different from Western Russia. Foreigners are a rare sight for Siberians, which made them very receptive to our presence. By the end of our stay in Irkutsk, it seemed that we knew nearly half of its 30,000 residents, or at least they knew us. Although Siberians are removed from what most people consider the center of activity, they are not unaware. They read the papers and stay up until 11 P.M. to watch Vremya, the Soviet news show broadcast from Moscow. They fear for their children. One researcher from Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute only hoped that his three year old daughter could get a better education than he had. Another scientist, who is married and already has one daughter told us he and his wife wanted to have another child but were afraid that they, meaning not only themselves, but also their country, could not afford it. The head of the law department at the University of Irkutsk spoke of his sister-in-law in Bratsk whose children were sick almost year round from the pollution and cold there. It seemed that the worse the living conditions in a city, the better the benefits would be. However, in most of the cities, certain essentials were unavailable or of very low quality. One woman from a region near Lake Baikal was on the shores picking a very prickly weed which she would then boil, peel and, through several other steps, make into shampoo. The radio telescope we visited was painted in two colors, one being a very bright, obnoxious blue which happened to be the same color of the hotel there; it was the only color available to them at the time -- later they finished with the other color. Our next and final leg of the trip was a stop in Moscow. The architectural style dates back to the beginnings of Russian history and is much more Eastern European than that of Leningrad. The churches of Zagorsk, a little city located just north of Moscow and deemed the religious center of Moscow, are gorgeous examples of this style with their bright colors and onion domes. Before the capital of Russia was moved to Leningrad, each of the tsars built a church there. Many old and young people flock there to see the icons and pay respects to the saints. Unfortunately, we were not warned about the dress code for visiting some of the churches. We were all in shorts (with our knees showing) and were shooed out of certain parts of churches by angry Soviet babushkas. Red Square provides an aura which is unmatched by any other. It is surrounded by Lenin's tomb and the Kremlin wall, a museum of natural sciences, St. Basil's Cathedral, and GUM (``goom''), the world's largest department store; the government, science, religion and the people all facing each other with a vast open space between them. Moscow has a completely different personality from any of the other cities we had visited: it was Westernized. Goods were more readily available to most foreigners as well as wealthy Muscovites. Nowhere else in the Soviet Union would there be BMW's and Mercedes Benzes, pizza parlors and hot dog stands. There were English-speaking people everywhere. Many Western chains have made it to Moscow: Baskin Robbins, Pizza Hut and the most popular, McDonald's. Even though we had heard frightening stories about the line to get in, we thought it our duty to visit the place. Even our guide didn't seem too upset that we wished to go; it was his favorite restaurant. It had been raining the entire day that we had decided to go to McDonald's, so the wait was only 45 minutes, instead of the usual three to four hours. After we finally got in, I was bewildered. I was standing in one of the world's largest McDonald's where there were more people behind the counter than in front of it. We even took pictures. The people were, in a sense, dressed up, and with good reason; McDonald's was a relatively expensive restaurant and having dinner there took virtually the entire night. It was sort of a night out for them. The Soviets have little to look forward to each day of their lives and still they made our visit very pleasant. They are a very somber people. Many old women on the streets sell flowers and people will spend several days' pay on them. They seem to represent the last ray of hope for a faltering society. And that is how I will remember the people; on a dark path but still willing to see a light somewhere down the road. As I proofread this article I realized that some things were lacking the sort of description I wished to convey. I could use only so many words. I have documented my presence there in other forms (pictures, souvenirs, etc.) They seem to do a better job and I'll always be willing to show anyone those. 108 Days In Europe Gus Lopez This past summer, I set out to visit every major country in Europe. This turned out to be a difficult thing to do in Summer 1991, since countries were being added faster than I could visit them. During my 3 1/2 month trip, I did end up ``seeing'' Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Austria, Yugoslavia (also Slovenia and Croatia depending on your point of view), Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, France, Monaco, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Whew! I traveled alone and with four friends at various stages of the trip (although our group maxed out at three at any one time). Before arriving in Europe, I had planned to travel with three friends: Trish, John N., and Sue. A fourth friend, John K., contacted me during the summer, and we figured out a plan to meet him somewhere in Europe. We did all the well-known touristy stuff, but so what? I really enjoyed seeing many of these touristic obligations, but they're not the reason I had the time of my life this summer. The most memorable experiences and the biggest thrills were the little, unplanned moments (e.g. meeting interesting people, discovering unknown sights, culture shock, etc.). Sweden: Most of Scandinavia was peaceful and relaxed. After a stretch of three consecutive overnight trains, we decided to hang out in a park in Stockholm to watch a guitar performance by an American named Julian. I was standing in the front row and chatted with him between sets. He's from San Francisco but performs in Stockholm during the summer, since the money's good and it's a more relaxed setting. During his last set, a boy starting dancing around Julian. At first it was kind of cute, but after a while, most people were getting very annoyed. The boy didn't seem to understand English and continued to circle Julian, so Julian tried to see if the kid's parents were around to take him away. Some time passes and a strange-looking guy walks in front of me and pulls a knife on Julian (without stabbing him) and then walks away quickly. The boy continued dancing. A drunk couple in the audience (who sat down next to me) kept interrupting the show and were requesting ``American country music.'' Julian said, ``I don't play country. I hate country. Anything else is fine.'' The boy is still dancing around Julian at this point. Finally, a guy comes up and grabs the boy by the arm and proceeds to violently beat him. Julian stops the show and asks, ``Is that your kid?'' The guy said no. He was just some random bystander. Yugoslavia, yes, Yugoslavia! Originally, we were going to spend four days visiting Yugoslavia but after the war broke out, we decided to play it safe and only go for one day. We took a train from Austria to Greece that went through Yugoslavia. I have to admit that I was very excited about taking a train smack through the middle of a battle zone. It turned out we didn't see much action, although there was a heavy military presence in Zagreb (later during the summer there was fighting around that same Zagreb railway station). Many soldiers with automatic weapons searched the train thoroughly for hours. Several people were taken off the train and were camped out at the station, but I believe it was for not having visas. The real excitement in Yugoslavia had nothing to do with the war at all. Early in the morning, we heard people on the train screaming. We were unable to determine the cause of the commotion. The other passenger in our compartment seemed to know, but he didn't speak English. Later that day, we found out (via a translator who spoke Greek and English) that our train had been robbed. People had lost cameras, packs, money, glasses, etc. One family lost $2500 in cash. Apparently, some kids had jumped on board at night and went through the train compartments throwing items of interest out the windows to collect later after they jumped off the train. They had come to our compartment, although John and I slept through it. I had taken the precaution of strapping my pack down in several places. One of the thieves was by my pack with a knife ready to cut it free, when the Greek guy woke up and chased him off the train. A few days after arriving in Athens, we found out that trains were no longer running through Yugoslavia since the borders were closed due to the war. Bulgaria: On the train from Greece to Bulgaria, we shared a compartment with an off-duty conductor who was also going to Sofia. We talked to him for a while, telling him where we were from etc., and eventually he asked us if we wanted to ``exchange money.'' John and I had never exchanged money on the black market before, so we didn't really know how to approach it. "Let's Go Europe" quoted the official exchange rate at 7.5 leva to the dollar and the black market rate at 10 leva to the dollar. This guy wanted to give us 11 leva to the dollar. We insisted on 12 to the dollar and after some initial resistance, he gave in and gave us that rate. Then, he wanted to know how much we wanted to exchange. Since we had no experience with this sort of transaction, we decided to change $1 each to be safe. He looked at us like we were being extremely cheap, which we were, but we didn't want to take any chances. After getting to Sofia, we discovered that the official rate is now 16 leva to the dollar. Sofia is actually a beautiful city, unlike descriptions we'd read in western travel books. The main pedestrian streets are paved in yellow-bricks, as in "The Wizard of Oz." Reading the street names was impossible, since the Bulgarian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet. At least in Greece we knew enough of the Greek alphabet from math and physics classes that we were able to find our way around. However, we were hopelessly lost translating Bulgarian signs. In the few cases where we were able to translate the street names, we found out that the names had changed. For example, we'd look for the ``Avenue of the Heroic Battle of the Shining Proletariat'' only to find that its name had changed to something else. Sofia is supposed to have the largest Lenin monster statue outside of Moscow. We looked for this statue and found the square on the map, but the statue is no longer there. That was okay though, because we found a nice, new shopping mall in the same area. Romania: When I stepped off the train in Bucharest, this image of 1984 popped inside my head. All I could see was people wearing drab coats walking briskly in every direction. We wanted to check our luggage at the station, and we had heard that non-citizens have a special baggage check area. We linked up with some Danes who were also looking for this baggage check area. They were shocked that we were planning to spend the night in a place like Bucharest, which made us wonder what they had read in their travel books. We went to one baggage check place, they pointed us to another. The people at the second place pointed to a third. The people at the third place gave us dirty looks and pointed off in a strange direction. After some more searching, we found yet another place where we were able to leave our packs. Fortunately, our image of Romania would change as we met some warm, friendly people. The tourist info office at the train station set us up with recently-legalized accommodations in a private home. The owner of the apartment didn't speak any English but was extremely friendly. Her name was Elena, and she spoke French, which was helpful to us because so does John. She made us cookies and tea and suggested the best restaurants in the city. We would soon discover that we were able to afford the most expensive restaurants in eastern Europe for every meal of the day. Even on a student budget, we were able to order anything and everything on menus without concern for cost. Romania is one of the few countries in Europe where the black market is still very strong. Visitors can expect to get three times the official exchange rate. We avoided changing money on the street since it's risky. There are stories of tourists having their money stolen, being turned into the police, and/or receiving outdated currency. We only exchanged with people we could trust such as Elena or waiters in restaurants (where you pay the bill in dollars and get foreign currency in change). The black marketeers on the street had no trouble pegging us as Americans and were constantly bugging us to change money with them. Many of them refused to take no for an answer, and most weren't interested in talking to us about Romania once they discovered we didn't want to change money. We did have a chance to speak to one black marketeer at length before leaving Bucharest. He was clearly a big-time black market type. He showed us a stack of US $1000 bills he was carrying. Apparently, it's safer for him to carry his loot in a well-designed wallet sock than leaving it at home. He told us about how he got into the black market when he was on the Romanian National Rugby Team and was one of the few (and lucky) who were able to travel abroad. He was the first black marketeer I've met who accepted traveler's checks; he has some scheme worked out with a friend at a bank to allow him to cash the checks. He explained to us that there is a strong demand for large hard currency bills (e.g. US $1000 bills) since Romanians need easily concealed hard currency when traveling outside the country. The government imposes a limit on the amount of hard currency they can carry while traveling, and Romanian lei are worthless and illegal to import into other countries. He also helped us figure out the complicated train schedules. Like many other Romanians we would speak to, he told us how not much has changed since Ceaucescu was removed from office. Our next stop in Romania was the medieval town of Brasov in Transylvania. The town is extremely well-preserved, when you consider that these folks don't have the money for restoration that similar towns in western Europe have. There weren't many tourists visiting the town, and they were from Bulgaria, Romania, and the USSR. While wandering around Brasov, we noticed a long line at the one of the cafeterias. We decided to queue up since we figured the locals know the best place to eat. Romania still has serious food shortages, so it is common to have a fixed dish of the day without any other options. The dish of the day was sausage, so we got that along with this orange drink that everyone else was ordering. After we sat down and tried the ``sausage'' we knew we had made a terrible mistake. It was by far the most foul-tasting food I've had in my life. I couldn't make sausage this bad if I tried. It tasted like the meat had been sitting out in the sun for days. I immediately tried to wash the taste out of my mouth with the orange drink. Another unpleasant surprise! The orange drink was so bad, it was impossible to finish. It's really a miracle we didn't get sick. We found an ice cream parlor and ordered heaps of delicious ice cream to get rid of the taste. In hindsight, going to the ice cream place was even riskier since dairy products in eastern Europe are notoriously bad. We went over to the far side of town to see a Disneyesque fairy-tale church. While wandering around the church, a man asked us if we wanted tours of the church and museum. At this point in the trip, we'd become pretty cynical about friendly people offering to help us, since many times they ended up having ulterior motives. But we were wrong this time, since he was genuinely friendly. It turns out he was the caretaker of the church, museum, and some other historic buildings, and the only way to see these not-so-well-known sights is to get a tour from him. He didn't want money from us but spent a couple of hours giving us a private tour and telling us about the town's history. He finished the tour by giving us complimentary postcards. We had asked him where we could buy bottled water since we needed some for the long train ride ahead. He offered us some bottled water he had just bought and refused to accept payment for it. Later that evening, we took an overnight train to Budapest. Unfortunately, we were unable to get couchettes (a compartment with beds), so we were stuck in a compartment with six other people and seats that didn't recline. To make matters worse, there were two hyperactive kids in our compartment. We realized it would be next to impossible to get any sleep in that compartment, so we searched through the train for empty seats. We did find an empty first-class compartment, but we only had second class tickets. We asked the conductor if we could ``upgrade'' our seats to first class for US $5. He said, ``$10.'' We said, ``How about $5 and a pack of Marlboros?'', since we had bought cigarettes in Greece for just such an emergency. He gladly accepted and held the compartment for us until we brought our backpacks. Italy: I loved Italy, although we did have a few unpleasant moments. Immediately after meeting John K. at the Rome American Express office, we headed out to see the Coliseum. We were ``greeted'' by some kids who pulled the classic maneuver of distracting tourists with a piece of cardboard with writing on it in order to snatch our wallets. We were aware of this stunt, so we knew to avoid them. There was a family behind us who didn't have such good luck. Although this family was well aware of the situation, the kids managed to grab the father's wallet. The father demanded that they give his wallet back, but the kids said that they didn't take anything. A bystander ran off to get the police and managed to find one. After the cop got to the scene, he lined up the kids and demanded the wallet. One of the kids eventually gave the wallet to the officer, who gave it back to the family. The cop then clubbed her several times until she was in extreme pain and crying. Lots of excitement for our first day in Rome. Wait, it gets better. On our second day, we were changing our accommodations and were carrying our packs through the streets to our new pension. I managed to get ahead of the others, so I turned around to see what was up. John and John were standing about a block away talking to some guys on the street. The guys were pointing out that something that looked like bird droppings had landed on all of them. So, John and John proceeded to take off their packs to hunt for paper so everyone could clean themselves up! My gut reaction was, ``This is a setup,'' so I rushed over there to warn them. One of the guys saw me and came my way. He pointed out the same dropping thing on his pant leg and asked me if I had any paper. I said no and continued forward. Then, he asked me if I could pick up the piece of paper next to me to hand him. I did, and he asked for another one. He was obviously trying to distract me, so I ignored him and rushed over to my friends. At this point, I see John N. running down the street after one of the guys who just grabbed his camera bag. Fortunately, the thief left the bag on the street after realizing there were many witnesses, so John got his camera back. We visited several hill towns in Italy but my favorite one had to be the small town of Civita di Bagnoregio, which is situated in the middle of a canyon. It's about an hour north of Rome, although you'd never know it. I had read about it in Rick Steves' travel books and had seen Julia Jaundalderis' photos of the town from a recent trip to Europe. The way we were planning to reach this town was to take a train to Orvieto (another interesting hill town) and then catch the bus to Bagnoregio which goes 13 miles through the hills. Well, we showed up in Orvieto, but unfortunately, we happened to be there on the day of some local saint's holiday, i.e. the buses weren't running. I was traveling with John K. at the time and convinced him that we should hitchhike. After 10 minutes we got a ride from a guy who drove his Saab like he was in a Grand Prix. Civita is absolutely beautiful. The view of the town from across the bridge is a major Kodak moment. We spent most of the day there: people-watching, exploring, wine-tasting, etc. and then it was time to head back to Orvieto. The problem was that we were unable to get a ride back. The sun was still out, and it was still very hot, so we had a forced impromptu 13 mile hike through the hills. Seeing Civita was definitely worth that inconvenience, although I believe John K. was ready to kill me for talking him into this. Morocco: Certainly the most thrilling day of the entire summer was our one day in Morocco. Sue and I took a day trip from Algeciras to Morocco. The ferry landed in Ceuta on the African continent, which is technically part of Spain. From there, our destination was Tetuan. The border crossing was stressful. The Moroccan officials held onto our passports for almost an hour and distributed them to us in batches. I had done a bit of reading on Morocco and knew to watch out for con-artists who prey on tourists. A Moroccan saw that I was carrying "Let's Go Spain, Portugal, and Morocco" and made some obnoxious comment about using that book. "Let's Go" is pretty good at describing all the different stunts that a con-artist might pull. However, this isn't always much help since most con-artists have read "Let's Go." While crossing the border, we met three Germans who were also going to Tetuan. We decided to share a cab with them. As we approached the line of cabs several guys asked us if we needed a taxi. We wanted to find an actual cab driver since many people will expect payment for just leading you ten feet to the nearest cab. We found an honest-looking guy in the driver's seat of a taxi and he offered to take us to Tetuan. After we got in the cab, he left the car, so we didn't know what to expect. Other taxi drivers were complaining that there is a formal queue for cabs, and we were in the wrong cab. We didn't know who to believe. Eventually, our driver came back and took us to Tetuan. I have never seen anything quite like Tetuan in my life. It seems like it's the international center for lawlessness. One of my travel books appropriately described it as ``making the bar scene in Star Wars look tame.'' Anything goes there. We experienced some of the strangest sights and smells. Con-artists were out in full force. The beggars made NYC beggars look like Donald Trump; some of them were suffering from serious infections. The medina area was more colorful than any market I had seen in Europe (and I saw quite a few). They were selling just about anything and everything at unbelievably cheap prices. The food looked great, but we resisted since we had heard many stories of tourists getting sick. One of the standard tricks used by the con-artists is to guess your nationality, say hello in your language, wait for a reaction from you to see if they guessed your nationality correctly, and from there exploit this knowledge to start a conversation. I hadn't shaved or showered in days and I still had my tan from the Riviera, so I didn't look like a typical American tourist. I was greeted in French, Italian, Greek, German, and Spanish but never English. Not everyone we met had a wonderful time in Morocco. On our way back to Spain, we met someone from San Francisco who had arrived in Tetuan the night before. The moment she crossed the border, she was surrounded by fifteen guys and was mugged, beaten, and had all her stuff stolen. We also spoke to several people in Spain who had major problems with theft and harassment in Morocco. A couple of weeks later, we ran into those same three Germans we had met in Morocco at a railway station in Madrid. We asked them about their week-long stay in Morocco. They hated it and had a lousy time. Their packs were stolen, and they were constantly fending off con-artists and thieves. Spain: While Sue and I were shopping in a store in Sevilla, Sue asked me if the product she was holding was laundry detergent, since she needed to buy some. I glanced at the box (with out reading it) and said, ``Yeah it looks right,'' since it had a washing machine icon on it. Later that evening, I was doing my own laundry. I had some leftover detergent, so I was about to use that. Sue offered me one of her detergent packets. I put my laundry in the sink, filled it with water, and then poured in some of her detergent. Then, I realized everything looked sort of green. I asked to see the box again, and this time, after reading it more carefully, I noticed she had bought green dye! I rushed to take my laundry out of the sink, but it was too late. My socks and underwear had changed from white to green. A couple of days later while we were visiting a friend in Madrid, I tried bleaching the clothes with no luck. I had read several travel books which mentioned a candy from Avila called yemas. Since we were in a habit of trying the local specialty, Sue and I bought a box of them. I tried one and had the same look on my face that I did after trying the sausage in Romania. Sue also tried one and agreed they tasted pretty bad. Yemas are essentially raw egg yolks dipped in sugar. They must be the big tourist joke in the area. We tried giving the box of candy away to others in Spain, but they would say they've tried them before and hate them. I figured a last resort would be to take them back to the US, since I know my father will eat anything. I was planning to visit my parents in New Jersey before heading back to Seattle anyway. It turns out he loved them and finished the box off in seconds. Maybe I should have saved the sausage and orange drink from Romania. There were also some events that don't require a long story: The time I was up in the mountains of Norway on the most beautiful train ride of my life shooting countless pictures literally every few seconds and my camera breaks! Some memorable dishes (all excellent): reindeer in Oslo, octopus in Lisbon, ox tail in Cordoba, and rabbit in Granada. There were also some great meals with food we were never able to identify. Visiting Tor Jeremiassen in Oslo during Norway's Midsummer holiday. Many American Express offices with couples who had everything stolen and were trying to get their traveler's checks and credit cards replaced. Running into Raj Vaswani in a grocery store in Copenhagen. Running into Rich Segal somewhere in the back streets of Venice. Getting up at the crack of dawn in London, setting up my tripod at the corner of Grove End St. and Abbey Rd., and taking a bunch of photos of a famous crosswalk before rush hour. The guy I met at a hostel in Luxembourg who would show up in a new country with only $10 and look for work to continue his trip. He was planning to get a free flight back to the States by throwing a rock through a window of a Paris boutique so they would deport him. Pictionary as a second language. France: On my last day in Europe, I was sitting in an outdoor cafe in Paris reflecting on the past 3 1/2 months. I seriously considered forgeting my flight the next day and staying longer in Paris. I had seen the best European art museums during the summer but had only seen two Salvador Dali paintings (he's one of my favorite artists) since most of his works are in private collections. After finishing my cafe au lait, I headed over to Montmartre, the last area I planned to explore before taking off. Upon arriving in Montmartre, I stumbled onto a Salvador Dali exhibit. I did take my flight back to the States (what a mistake), but I'm sure I'll return sometime soon. The highlight of the summer was seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa. No, just kidding. The many unplanned experiences we faced in our travels will be the things to tell my grandchildren about, unless of course, they really want to hear about the Leaning Tower.